Erna Paris: Demanding a societal norm always leads to evil

Personal privacy: the right not to have our words tracked by the overseers of the digital world we now inhabit. Freedom of expression: the right to communicate our commitments however we choose, provided no harm is done. Remarkably, both these hard-won rights are being jeopardized at the highest levels of government.

The emerging environment of permanent surveillance is currently being led by the United States, but spying on citizenries will soon become a global phenomenon. Enhanced technology will make this possible, creating opportunities governments will not want to forgo. Incessant fearmongering over possible threats to security has already muted public dissent, normalizing intrusions that would recently have been unthinkable.

The deeper question is, what do the official listeners hope to uncover when they secretly intercept our conversations? The detail of a terrorist attack? Possibly, but that would be rare. What they are tracking, one suspects, is divergence from predetermined norms of behaviour. And that’s what should make us afraid, especially if our ethnicity or politics pushes us onto their radar screen.

The Parti Québécois’ Charter of Values arises from similar impulses. It, too, calls for surveillance in an effort to ensure conformity, this time to a different set of state-defined norms.

The dust bin of history brims with the failed attempts of leaders to enforce centralized notions of national identity or correct thinking, and it has mattered not whether the designated identity is religious (Christianity in the Middle Ages), Aryan (Germany in the 20th century), communism (the Soviet orbit in the 20th century), or secular (France and now Quebec in 21st century).

State-imposed adherence to a central model simply doesn’t work. Separating “us” (the majority) from “them” (the minority) fractures social trust in mixed societies and encourages discrimination. There is no “neutral” space when governments practice intolerance. Members of the majority inevitably begin to police abuses themselves — and report to the authorities. Furthermore, there are always breaches because human beings cannot alter their innermost selves, even when ordered to do so. The wearing of a skullcap, veil or turban is not a fashion statement; it is an internalized religious command that cannot be violated by the faithful.

An early example (also in the service of enhanced power and national unity) occurred long ago in 15th-century Spain, a multi-religious society where Christians, Jews and Arabs had lived together for a millennium in relative peace. As always, it was easy to foment populist resentment against minorities, in this case the Jews and the Arabs. Eventually both groups were compelled to convert to Roman Catholicism, the new criterion for belonging to the polity. But their conversions always appeared inadequate to the authorities. Some cultural differences remained eradicable. Eventually this perception of difference led to an inquisition to “purify the faith” and to violence.

Because neighbours and relatives were encouraged to report on breaches (such as a Jewish woman who might be suspected of cooking a Sabbath meal), a climate of dread stalked the peninsula. Before long, some converts began to confess to “crimes” they may or may not have committed years earlier. Others tried to hide or flee.

There are no true parallels in history, only echoes that are worth adverting to; all the same we may wonder whether similar fears are re-emerging in our own era of post-911 scrutiny. A quick visit to the Internet uncovers a crowd of eager entrepreneurs marketing “ready to wear counter-surveillance gear” to protect the user from face recognition software and the sort of thermal imaging deployed by drones and airport body scanners. Is this mere paranoia? Eventually, we’ll know.

North of the U.S. border, one listens to the voices of anxious Muslim women wearing head scarves who say they may be forced to leave Quebec. At the very least, what both these circumstances convey is historical continuity. Under the threat of state-sponsored surveillance, deep trepidation abounds.

What Parti Québécois Leader Pauline Marois has failed to understand is that denoting secularism as the unifying factor of society is not the antithesis of the oppressive Christian governance of former Quebec premier Maurice Duplessis, as she claims. The content of the sanctioned identity may have changed, but the coercive form remains the same.

Only multiculturalism, or “live and let live” under a common umbrella of law, can guarantee peace in ethnically diverse societies, whose numbers are increasing given global demographic trends. When the Iron Curtain fell in 1989, delegations from Europe descended on Ottawa to learn how Canada integrated hundreds of thousands of immigrants annually with such success. One response is our postwar attitudes of inclusiveness that persist in spite of intermittent hiccups. And the brokered compromises of case law when cultural disputes are brought to court. Accommodation. That’s what we’re good at.

Privacy and freedom of religion. They are old struggles in new guise, and they call for vigilance.

Erna Paris is an author and the recipient of the 2012 World Federalist Movement-Canada World Peace Award. An updated version of her book, The End of Days, will be republished next spring under the title From Tolerance to Tyranny: A Cautionary Tale From Fifteenth-Century Spain. Her website is ernaparis.com.

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